


Duly Inhibited.

by SkaffenAmtiskaw



Category: Revelation Space Series - Alastair Reynolds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkaffenAmtiskaw/pseuds/SkaffenAmtiskaw
Summary: What if Nevil Clavain hadn't defected after the revelation of the Conjoiner exodus fleet? Instead, what if Clavain manages to convince the Conjoiners to act in the interest of humanity instead?Thanks to the quarantine, I've been rereading the series and I felt that the conflict between Clavain and Skade et al. seems rather forced, simply in order to further the plot of Redemption Ark. I'm not necessarily criticizing Reynolds, just that this doesn't fit in with my understanding of these characters.So, here's an alternate way this could've gone down.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	1. Clavain - I

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins at the revelation of the Conjoiner Exodus Fleet to Clavain.

_Epsilon Eridani System, 2614_

The Master of Works led them to the interior of Skade’s comet, halting inside a modest viewing blister set into the interior wall of the hollowed-out body. Hermetically sealed from the blister was the comet’s main chamber, in a vacuum so high-grade that even the mild vapors leaking from the Conjoiner suits would have caused an unacceptable degradation.

Clavain stared into the chamber. Beyond the glass was a cavern of dizzying scale. It was bathed in rapturous blue light, filled with vast machines and an almost subliminal sense of scurrying activity. For a moment the scene was far too much to take in.

Then all too soon he grasped the scale of things and realized with a perceptual jolt that he was looking into a vast manufactory of sorts, where distant machines toiled with an inhuman efficiency: droves of sterile construction servitors traversing the vacuum by the thousand as they went about their tasks. They communicated with each other using lasers, and it was the scatter and reflection of those beams that drenched the chamber in such shivering blue radiance. And it was indeed cold, Clavain knew. Dotted around the walls of the chamber he recognized the nubbed black cones of cryo-arithmetic engines, calculating overtime to suck away the heat of intense industrial activity that would otherwise have boiled the comet away.

Clavain’s attention flicked to the reason for all that activity. He was not surprised to see the ships - not even surprised to see that they were starships - but the degree to which they had been completed astonished him. He had been expecting half-finished hulks, but he could not believe that these ships were far from flight-readiness. There were twelve of them packed side by side in clouds of geodesic support scaffolding. They were identical shapes, smooth and black as torpedoes, barbed near the rear with the outflung spars and nacelles of Conjoiner drives. Though their form differed little from the absurdly streamlined standard profile of most lighthuggers, he was certain that each of the ships was incubating capabilities no lighthugger was reasonably expected to match.

Skade smiled, obviously noting his reaction. [Impressed?]

 _Very._ Truth be told, he was more curious than impressed.

[Now you understand why the Master was so concerned about the risk of an unintentional weapons discharge, or even a powerplant overload. Of course, you’re wondering why we’ve started building them again.]

_Would the wolves have anything to do with it, by any chance?_

[Perhaps you should tell me why you think we ever stopped making them.]

_Skade, I returned to the Mother Nest only two decades ago. I’ve been too busy fighting the war to mull these decisions over._

[Still, you’re an intelligent man. You must have formed a few theories of your own.]

For a moment Clavain thought of telling her that the matter had never really concerned him; that the decision to stop making starships had happened when he was in deep space, a fait accompli by the time he returned, and - given the immediate need to help his side win the war - not the most pressing issue at hand.

But that would have been a lie. It had always troubled him.

_Generally it’s assumed that we stopped making them for selfish economic reasons, or because we were worried that the drives were falling into the wrong hands - Ultras and other undesirables. Or that we discovered a fatal flaw in the design that meant that the drives had a habit of exploding now and again._

[Yes, and there are at least half a dozen other theories in common currency, ranging from the faintly plausible to the ludicrously paranoid. What was your understanding of the reason?]

_We’d only ever had a stable customer relationship with the Demarchists. The Ultras bought their drives off second- or third-hand sources, or stole them. But once our relationship with the Demarchists began to deteriorate, which happened when the Melding Plague crashed their economy, we lost our main client. They couldn’t afford our technology, and we weren’t willing to sell it to a faction that showed increasing signs of hostility._

[A very pragmatic answer, Clavain.]

_I never saw any reason to look for any deeper explanation._

[There is, of course, quite a grain of truth in that. Economic and political factors did play a role. But there was something else. It can’t have escaped your attention that our own internal shipbuilding programme has been much reduced.]

_Yes, but I assumed that it was no longer a priority for us. We’ve had a war to fight and we have enough ships for our needs as it is._

[True, but even those ships have not been active. Routine interstellar traffic has been greatly reduced. Travel between Conjoiner settlements in other systems has been cut back to a minimum.]

_Again, effects of a war—_

[Had remarkably little to do with it, other than providing a convenient cover story.]

_Cover story?_

[Had the real reason ever come out, there would have been widespread panic across the whole of human-settled space. The socio-economic turmoil would have been incomparably greater than anything caused by the present war.]

_Tell me._

[You were right, in a sense. It was to do with the wolves, Clavain.]

_He shook his head. It can’t have been._

[Why not?]

_Because we didn’t learn about the wolves until Galiana returned. And Galiana didn’t encounter them until after we separated. Both of these events predate the edict to stop shipbuilding by a significant margin, Skade._

Skade’s helmet nodded a fraction. [That’s true, in a sense. Certainly, it wasn’t until Galiana’s return that the Mother Nest obtained any detailed intelligence concerning the nature of the machines. But the fact that the wolves existed - the fact that they were out there - that was already known, many years before.]

_I don’t follow. Galiana was the first to encounter them._

[No. She was merely the first to make it back alive - or at least the first to make it back in any sense at all. Before that, there had only been distant reports, mysterious instances of ships vanishing, the odd distress signal. Over the years the Closed Council collated these reports and came to the conclusion that the wolves, or something like the wolves, was stalking interstellar space. That was bad enough, yet there was an even more disturbing conclusion, one that led to the edict. The pattern of losses pointed to the fact that the machines, whatever they were, homed in on a specific signature from our engines. We concluded that the wolves were drawn to us by the tau-neutrino emissions that are a characteristic of our drives.]

_How?_

[How what?]

_How was it concluded that the wolves were drawn to us by the tau-neutrino emissions of our drives?_

[I can’t be certain, but it appears as all wolf attacks happened in interstellar space, along the more regular trade routes.]

He felt his irritation rising. There had to be more that Skade wasn’t disclosing. _And that was enough for us to give up on building starships for good? And, more importantly, why haven’t the rest of humanity been notified? There have to be at least a few thousand Conjoiner drives still in regular use within human space if memory serves. Are th-_

[Clavain, this isn’t even known to most Conjoiners, save for those in the Closed Council. Releasing this data would’ve done more harm than good.]

_Look around you, Skade. We’re already fighting a war with our erstwhile allies._

Skade flicked her wrist dismissively. [Yes, and we’re winning.]

Clavain looked away, his frustration easily palpable. _What now?_

[When Galiana returned we knew we’d been right. All our fears had been confirmed. Therefore, this.] Skade gestured towards the main chamber.

_The wolves are still out there._

[Yes, they’ve always been out there, hiding in the darkness, watching and waiting. For four centuries we’ve been extremely lucky, stumbling through the night, making noise and light, broadcasting our presence into the galaxy. I think in some ways they must be blind, or that there are certain kinds of signal they filter from their perceptions. They never homed in on our radio or television transmissions, for instance, or else they would have scented us en masse centuries ago. That hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps they are designed only to respond to the unmistakable signs of a starfaring culture, rather than a merely technological one. Speculation, of course, but what else can we do but speculate?]

Then Skade reached into his head and planted an image. What she showed him was pitiless blackness studded by a smattering of faint, feeble stars. The stars did nothing to nullify the darkness, serving only to make it more absolute and cold. This was how Skade now perceived the cosmos, as ultimately inimical to life as an acid bath. But between the stars was something other than emptiness. The machines lurked in those spaces, preferring the darkness and the cold. Skade made him experience the cruel flavour of their intelligence. It made the thought processes of the Master of Works seem comforting and friendly. There was something bestial in the way the machines thought, a furious slavering hunger that would eclipse all other considerations.

A feral, ravenous bloodlust.

Clavain looked at the twelve brand-new starships again. _And now? Why start shipbuilding again?_

[Because now we can. Nightshade was a prototype for these twelve much larger ships. They have quiet drives. With certain refinements in drive topology we were able to reduce the tau-neutrino flux by two orders of magnitude. Far from perfect, but it should allow us to resume interstellar travel without immediate fear of bringing down the wolves. The technology will, of course, have to remain strictly within Conjoiner control.]

_What of the rest of humanity?_

Remontoire, silent for so long, joined the conversation now. [We still have time. Maybe a few decades at most. Once the war starts winding down, there will be efforts-]

Skade turned towards Clavain and interjected. [And if we don’t have the time, these dozen will have to do. With the war on, this is the best we could do.]

_I still don’t understand why we’ve suddenly begun shipbuilding again._

[As a purely precautionary measure, should we need them.]

Clavain studied the ships again. Even if each ship only had the capacity to carry fifty or sixty thousand sleepers - and they looked capable of carrying far more than that - Skade’s fleet would have sufficed to carry nearly half the population of the Mother Nest.

He looked at the ships, and focused on the drives. From his vantage point, little difference could be discerned between these and their regular counterparts, save for a larger profile. _How many can they carry?_

[Barely enough. However, we’re reasonably certain that there’s enough time to build more. Perhaps many more.]

_Let’s hope that your estimates are correct, then. But what of the old ships that are still being used?_

[We’ve done what we can. Closed Council agents have succeeded in regaining control of a number of outlaw vessels. These ships were destroyed, of course: we can’t use them either, and existing drives can’t be safely converted to the stealthed design.]

_They can’t?_

Into Clavain’s mind Skade tossed the image of a small planet, perhaps a moon, with a huge bowl-shaped chunk gouged out of one hemisphere, glowing cherry-red.

[They can’t.]

_Has this information been disclosed to the Ultras, at the least?_

Behind the visor of her crested helmet she smiled tolerantly. [Clavain, Clavain. Always so willing to believe in the greater good of humanity. I find your attitude heartening, I really do. But what good would disclosure serve? Like I said, this information is already too sensitive to share even with the majority of the Conjoined.]

He wanted to argue but he knew she was correct. It was decades since any utterance from the Conjoiners had been taken at face value. Even a warning as bluntly urgent as that would be assumed to have duplicitous intent.

[Do you understand the gravity behind your mission to Delta Pavonis now? We need the hell-class weapons, Clavain. Two of the ships plus the prototype will constitute a taskforce for the recovery operation. They will be armed with the most advanced weapons in our arsenal, and will contain recently developed technologies of a tactically advantageous nature.]

_Like, I suppose, the systems you were testing?_

[Certain further tests must still be performed, but yes.]

Skade unhitched herself. ’Master of Works - we’re done here for now. My guests have seen enough. What is your most recent estimate for when the ships will be flight ready?’

The servitor, which had folded and entwined its appendages into a tight bundle, swiveled its head to address her. ‘Sixty-one days, eight hours and thirteen minutes.’

‘Thank you. Be sure to do all you can to accelerate that schedule. Clavain won’t want to be detained a moment, will you?’

“Most certainly not”, he said, with little belief behind his words. To say that he disagreed with what the Closed Council had planned would be an understatement, but he begrudgingly admitted that their options were limited. He would need to resolve this; and he would, somehow.

‘Please follow me,’ said the Master of Works, flicking a limb towards the exit. It was anxious to lead them back to the surface.

The journey back towards the surface of the comet seemed to take much longer than the trip down had, and Clavain used this time productively, concentrating purely on the mechanics of the task in hand. The Master of Works bustled ahead of them, straddling the tunnel bore, picking its way along it with fastidious care. The servitor’s mood was impossible to read, but Clavain had the impression that it was very glad to be done with the three of them. It had been programmed to tend the operations here with zealous protectivity, and Clavain could not help but admire the grudging way it had entertained them. He had dealt with many robots and servitors in his lifetime, and they had been programmed with many superficially convincing personalities. But this was the first one that had seemed genuinely resentful of human company.

Halfway along the route to the comet's surface, Clavain realized what had to be done.


	2. Skade - I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major divergence from canon begins from here on. Basically, Clavain doesn't pull a runner and instead works from within the Conjoiners, like any sane human would.

_Mother Nest, Epsilon Eridani System, 2614 _

When Clavain had first approached her with his idea of using the hyperpig, she'd responded with exaggerated unenthusiasm. Not because the plan had it’s demerits – which it did, despite it being a sound strategy overall – but because she simply could not bring herself to trust Clavain. Clavain was an insufferable idealist, and the problem with idealists were that they tended to gel with her plans as well as antimatter did with matter.

Or rather, the Night Council’s plans.

She was at Nightshade’s berth – on a routine inspection of the top secret machinery – when she noticed Clavain heading purposefully towards her. He seemingly hadn't found her staring at Nightshade odd at all, unaware that she was busy analysing the data dumped into her mind by the sole surviving technician, her augmented consciousness breezing through many gigabytes of esoteric information.

As was his way, Clavain had directly breached his ideas with barely any formalities, and, after delivering a short summary of the plan, had directed a stream of data into her mind. It was an elaborately detailed plan, with even the most minute of factors having been evaluated for their risks and reward. However, there were glaring collaterals, as most plans admittedly had.

She’d taken a full minute to ponder it over, and had arrived at a suitable response. _It's too great a risk to take._

Clavain shrugged, confident in the merits of his plan. [Remontoire had him thoroughly trawled, and though his memories are highly blockaded, we’ve gotten through. At this point, we probably know more of him than he does himself.]

_So?_

[So we know what drives him. And we also know that he has considerable influence, down in the depths of the Mulch. All we now nee _—_ ]

 _No, it's the rest of your plan that I have an issue with._ _We’re fighting a war, yet y_ _ou’d have us share_ _potentially damning_ _intel_ _ligence_ _with our enemies_ _._ _If they realize what this bit of information can do to disrupt our internal cohesion, winning the war wouldn’t matter at all._

[I’d sooner risk that, than to leave the Demarchists at the mercy of the Wolves, Skade.]

_Always the conscientious one, Clavain._

[The war is drawing to an end, and the Demarchists are losing. There's no excuse to be this self-centered, Skade. We have the technology to evacuate this system, and maybe most of human space.]

_So we expend time that we could've otherwise spent putting as much distance as possible between ourselves and the Wolves, to do what? Stuff the entire population of Yellowstone into reefersleep at gunpoint?_

[One step at a time, Skade. For now all we need is the Demarchists to know the extent of this threat. They have large enough manufactories of their own. Perhaps in time _—_ ]

_Perhaps by then the Wolves will be here, and we'll be too late._

[Through our deep space expedition we know of hundreds of otherwise sterile, metal-rich systems that’d be good candidates for settlements. We could begin phased evacuation within two decades at the lea _—_ ]

Skade shook her head, her frustration rising. _And leave without the hell-class weapons? Unacceptable. We'd be little more than target practice for the Wolves._

[I am well aware of that, but the mission has no schedule, and neither do the Wolves. A round trip to Delta Pavonis will take 50, perhaps even 60 years. The evacuation needs to be before that, we'll have to rendezvous en route.]

Skade pursed her lips. _Not necessarily._

[You have a better idea? I'm all ears, Skade.]

 _As a matter of fact, I do. We now have capabilities that allow us to travel faster than ever before._ Nightshade _is a prototype, and once we've tested it to our satisfaction, the technologies within will be standardized across the exodus fleet._ As she spoke, she could see Clavain's face light up with a childlike curiosity.

[What capabilities?]

 _Inner Sanctum business, Clavain. Couldn't tell you even if I wanted to._ Skade couldn't help but feel a vicarious pleasure in denying him the information.

Undeterred, Clavain pushed on. [Surely not superluminal travel?] She could almost see the raw curiosity bubbling from within.

_Perhaps. Perhaps not._

Clavain seemingly decided to leave his curiosity unsatiated, at least for now. [How long to Delta Pavonis, then?]

_Forty years, at the most. Less, if one were to really push themselves._

A short pause followed as Clavain tried to make sense of the number. Eventually, he must’ve relented and returned his focus to the topic at hand.

[That's still too long.]

_Perhaps. Perhaps not._

Clavain peered at her for a while before Skade realized that it was her nonchalance that seemed to be bothering him.

[I intend to float this proposal in the next Closed Council. I trust I have your support?]

_Only if there's no delay whatsoever to the departure for Delta Pavonis._

[There won't be. We've already initiated debriefing Scorpio.] With that said, Clavain turned and left just as abruptly as he had arrived.

Somewhere deep within the maze that was her mind, Skade felt a flutter of something bordering on irritation. She should’ve been aware.

Suppressing the thought, Skade returned to sifting through the report, eventually issuing her orders to the technician and leaving for a certain vault in the outermost ring of Mother Nest.

It unnerved her to bring something as dangerous within the small, fragile asteroid habitat that was Mother Nest, however, there was little doubt within her mind that one weakened Wolf was any threat.

She’d been interrogating the Wolf within Galiana for well over a month now but the entity wasn’t helping them extract any sort of meaningful information about the true nature of the threat. All of the more common tools one could use for interrogation were utterly useless against it. Attempting to coerce it would only result in hurting Galiana, or what remained of her anyway. There was only one, rather risky option remaining.

[Report, Skade?]

It was the Night Council, again. _The latest round of testing on the inertial dampener went as planned. I wouldn’t call it progress, but there’s a lot more valuable data to work with._

[Excellent. By when can you initiate testing under acceleration?]

_As soon as Clavain and his posse leave for Delta Pavonis. Speaking of which, he intends to use the captive pig to—  
_

[We are aware. It is inconsequential, and thus, should be left to the Closed Council to deal with.]

Skade let her silence convey her consent.

[Any progress with our guest, in the meantime?]

It was a more accurate term than prisoner, Skade had to admit, but one that terrified her anyway. The Wolf may well be more than capable of escaping its host and even Mother Nest, despite being kept as close to absolute zero as humanly possible – it had, however, apparently decided wait for its pack to appear before it would act. _None whatsoever._ _Exordium seems to be our only option._

There was a prolonged silence, and Skade imagined clandestine arguments occurring somewhere within the Mother Nest. [That might be unwise. We are of the opinion that Exordium may only be considered when all other options have been rigorously exhausted.]

Skade almost smiled at the apparent innocence of the order. _T_ _orturing the Wolf may not even be possible. I_ _n_ _injur_ _ing_ _Galiana,_ _we run the risk that we_ _might irreversibly lose any hope of her co-operating with us._

[Galiana is a relic of the past, Skade. The loss of one is not a great loss to the whole.] With that, the Night Council withdrew, leaving her right before she entered the vault. The Night Council was ruthlessly pragmatic, and although she cared little for individuals, being ordered to torture the semi-mythical messiah that was Galiana left her very conflicted.

Somehow, she steeled herself, and entered the frigid, dark vault. An order was an order, and she’d obey unflinchingly.

For Mother Nest.


	3. Scorpio - I

_ Mother Nest, Epsilon Eridani System, 2616 _

Scorpio was not having a good day at all.

At all.

He hadn’t been having a particularly good time ever since the Ferrisville coppers had managed to finally nab him, but since then, things had somehow managed to get worse.

When he came around, he’d needed barely a cursory glance of his surroundings to realize that he was still a prisoner. All that had changed since when his zombie captives had done the universe a favor by killing themselves, was that he'd ended up a prisoner of the spiders instead. It was definitely a more plush prison – borderline luxurious, even – but it was a prison nonetheless.

Second, and considerably more concerning, was the fact that he was not in his own body. In fact, he was not sure that his new body was of the same species as his previous one. Save for his face, and his hands, the rest of his body was essentially that of a human. Gone were his trotters, and in their place was a considerably more human set of four fingers and a thumb. Oddly enough, he seemed to have no trouble with dexterity. _They’ve_ _probably_ _fucked with my brain too_ , he realized.

Both of these realizations, although worrisome on their own, paled in front of the third. Far and away the most alarming of the day’s revelations, was the fact that he was now a Conjoiner.

Or so he assumed.

When he’d tried to reach for an itch on top of his otherwise glabrous head, his trotterettes – _no, fingers_ – had brushed against something that had no business being on his head. It was a rigid, crest-like ridge running dorsally from the base of his skull to just above his forehead, made of what seemed to be an inorganic polymer.

_A fucking spider._

Being a baseline human was unsettling enough in its own right, but this was beyond abhorrent. He’d felt for the seam where his skin met foreign polymer, and had begun to pry away at it, in a frenetic attempt to free him of this repulsive object; when a powerful wave of emotions washed over him. It was hard to describe what it was, but it instantly filled him with pure serenity while his muscles relaxed.

Despite himself, Scorpio had ceased his frenzied actions and felt his mood lighten. The reason for this change couldn’t have been more obvious. _They’re fucking with my mind again._

His attempts at self-harm abandoned, he gradually drifted away into a dreamless sleep.

When he awakened, he was not alone anymore. Somehow, he instinctively knew that not a lot of time had passed.

Across him stood a dour faced Conjoiner, and to her right, in the corner of the room, floating at waist height, with no visible projection machinery around him, was a hologram of an old man’s face.

It was that same old geezer that he’d almost gotten when the spiders had come for him.

The woman, on the other hand, was a fresh face – her skin was a deep ebony, and she was exquisitely thin, almost anorexic. She was the one to speak first, though, oddly enough, Scorpio hadn’t seen her mouth move at all.

_Hello, Scorpio. I am Aelimia, and this is my colleague Clavain._ She’d titled her head to acknowledge the disembodied face.

Scorpio would have gladly told her what he thought of them both, but he still attempting to understand how she’d spoken to him, without even opening her mouth.

Aemilia seemed to sense his unease. _I understand that you must be confused, but we’re communicating over the local network, instead of_ _vocalizing conventionally_ _._ _The device on your head allows us that luxury._

“Although if you prefer, we can switch over to speaking colloquial Norte”, said the hologram.

“I’d prefer to disembowel you both.” The voice he was speaking with almost seemed to match his own, but neither of the two seemed to be as close to unsettled as he’d like them to be. Either they were supremely confidant in their abilities to physically neutralize any threat Scorpio posed, or – more disquietingly – they could meddle with his mind, again.

For some reason, Scorpio suspected that it was both. The woman seemed to particularly unnerve Scorpio. The frail Conjoiner seemed to exude an air of supreme confidence that made him conclude that she was capable of physical feats that would put the best of his pigs to shame.

After a while, it became evident that neither of the two seemed inclined to respond to his bait. “What have you done to me? And why?”

The slim Conjoiner leaned forward, almost eager to converse now. _Like I said earlier, t_ _he device on your head allows us to communicate with you in accelerated time. It’s a temporary measure, but very vital,_ _and we have every_ _—_

Scorpio held up his very human hands, brandishing the evidence of his disfigurement. “No, I said, what have to done to me?”

It was Clavain now. “We’ve saved you from certain death by execution. The Ferrisville Convention was intent on making an example of you.”

Scorpio was more confused now. It made no sense. What were the spiders to gain by preventing the coppers from killing him?

“Why?”

_Because we need your assistance._ _It was the emaciated Conjoiner again._ _We removed your CNS and prepared a new body for you. This one._ _We ensured that there’d be enough of a difference_ _to prevent anyone from recognizing the infamous Scorpio._

“And so you faked my death?”

The woman shrugged. _It was an accident during a high-g maneuver. Apparently, the Conjoiners who apprehended Scorpio had failed to secure him in an acceleration harness. Of course, we had to replicate your neural structures to some degree_ _,_ _but_ _after sustaining_ _seven gees,_ _there wasn’t much that the Ferrisville_ _C_ _onvention could_ _do to_ _discer_ _n the truth._

Scorpio couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness. All his life’s work was irreversibly gone. He wondered what his subordinates had felt. Lasher, who practically worshiped him as the avatar of some porcine god. Blood, who’d no doubt take his anger out on whoever was unlucky enough to cross his path. Cruz, the only human he’d ever felt any kinship with. W ith Scorpio gone, he wondered how they’d get along.

“How long?” He asked weakly.

_How long since Scorpio’s death?_ _A_ _l_ _ittle less_ _than a standard_ _year and a half. It isn't trivial to clone a whole new body, especially one that borrows elements of 2 very different species..  
_

It was almost too much to take. But the questions still burned within him.

_“Why.”_

Clavain, silent for so long, spoke. “Because we need your help."

"With the war? Weren't you willing already?"

_No, this war is on it's last legs. We have identified another threat facing us, one far greater in scope than this petty war._

Scorpio almost laughed. “I’m not a big picture guy, sorry. Never have been."

Aemilia shrugged again. _Which is why you’re the perfect candidate. We need intel on something deep within Chasm city. The war already has us stretched, and there are sophisticated tools to detect Conjoiners in most Demarchy settlements. However, no one would suspect a hyperpig of working for, much less being, a Conjoiner._ _Do us this favor, and we’re even. You’re free to go once we have what is needed._

“And what is it that you need?"

_To be honest, we do not know a lot about the target either. All we know is that it is an alien artifact of considerable dimensions. Locate it for us, and we’ll deal with the rest._

Incredulity had been one emotion Scorpio rarely felt, but this moment more than merited it. “An alien artifact, of considerable dimensions, in Chasm city.”

_In the Chasm actually, if our i_ _ntel_ _is correct. The Conjoiner geneers working on the Lilly had reported_ _weird_ _abnormalities_ _in the fabric of space-time,_ _radiating_ _out from the_ _Chasm_ _depths with varying periodicity. We have cause to believe this artifact predates human settlement in the—_

Clavain abruptly cut her off, ” We’ll brief you on the details later, but there’s something you need to know first.”

The woman paused, uncertainty, and perhaps even some apprehension, written plainly on her face. “The threat to all civilization”, Clavain continued.

Scorpio steeled himself for a reveal, hoping his eagerness wouldn’t be apparent.

Nothing happened. Neither of the 2 moved, but continued watching him with the same casual intent as before.

Patience wasn’t a virtue Scorpio was known for. “Well?”

_You know._

Scorpio had started to respond, but he realized that he did know. Somehow, Scorpio knew exactly what the threat was.

He knew of the threat encroaching on the fringes of human space, powerful, yet patient. He knew of the many distress calls of the doomed Ultranauts who strayed too far from the traffic lanes. He knew about why the Conjoiners had ceased building drives for relativistic travel. He knew of Galiana’s return, and the knowledge her sacrifice had brought them.

He knew why this system-wide war was utterly inconsequential, when held against the feral, slavering hunger of the Wolves.

It took him an effort to not show emotion.

It was almost comical, Scorpio felt. After all the maiming and murdering of sentient, sapient beings he had done or caused, he was now to work with the good guys.

He considered his choices: there were none. If he refused, the Conjoiners would certainly not kill him, but it was very likely they would wipe his memory, at the least. Or worse, they probably would let him live with in the confines of their habitat, but he'd sooner choose death than live as an oddity in this ridiculous utopia.

Returning to his old life was impossible, but returning to Chasm City was the closest to it.

Scorpio took a deep breath, and focused. _I'm in._


	4. Skade - II

_Enroute to Delta Pavonis, 2622_

Skade was one of the only three Conjoiners on Nightshade who were to stay awake for the entire duration of the journey. Normally, it would’ve been a dreary proposition, but Skade had taken up on herself the task of optimizing and experimenting on the inertia-suppressing machinery in the meantime. It was slower than what Skade had expected, but if things were to start getting too monotonous, she always had the option of torturing the messianic Galiana for information.

With the former, Skade and her team had significant progress, and they now seemed to be approaching closer and closer to the theoretical limit of the mechanism.

As for the latter, however, there had been absolutely no breakthrough.

The Wolf was unusually chatty for a civilisational threat, but it had studiously avoided answering any of the real questions that Skade had. When, on the insistence of the Night Council, she had finally attempted torturing it for intel, the Wolf had laughed and allowed Galiana’s anguish to bleed into Skade’s mind.

She’d stopped torturing Galiana almost immediately, but the Wolf had observed how Skade had reacted, and began hurting Galiana on its own initiative. Incessantly in pain, Skade had hastily put Galiana into a deep refeersleep, but she realized that sooner or later she’d need to give in to the Wolf’s demands.

Why the Wolf wanted to access Exordium, Skade couldn’t answer, but she was certain that little good would come out of it. Unable to see a way out, Skade had shelved the problem of the Wolf for another day, preferably when they’d finally had the Hell-class weapons where they belonged: firmly in Conjoiner control.

Away from the Mother Nest and from the overbearing presence of the Night Council, Skade had the liberty to do as she pleased, and so she’d gladly turned her focus on to the mundane details of the inertia-suppressors. They were currently reduced to testing the machinery conservatively, with minute, incremental increases to the potency of the inertial damping. There was no need for it, really; more than enough performance had been wrong out of it to meet their needs.

Nightshade was now cruising at a whisker below four-fifths of lightspeed, still accelerating hard at just over two gees. A full lightday ahead of the rest of the larger lighthuggers of the taskforce, Nightshade was being used as a lower risk testbed for the inertia-suppressors, with the refinements and knowledge gained here being passed on to the rest.

She had crammed all the technically savvy Conjoiners of the taskforce into Nightshade, a full dozen of them, and the rest of the taskforce had merely imitated what her team had conclusively proven to be safe for use. This had worked well for them, but had the side effect of placing Skade well ahead of even Clavain’s flagship, _Galiana’s Gift._

Soon, Nightshade would reach the physiologically tolerable acceleration ceiling of three gees, and beyond that it would only be a question of waiting out the duration of the voyage. As the small lighthugger had gradually continued suppressing more and more of her inertia, and thus ramping up her acceleration, the gap between Nightshade and the rest of the taskforce had widened, and would continue widening until she’d finally attain a cruise velocity of 0.9c.

Acceleration would then be brought to below half a gee – to allow the manufactories to function more closer to optimum – and the energies of the taskforce would be directed to the preparations for the mission at hand. While the rest would begin decelerating as they neared Delta Pavonis, Nightshade’s lower mass would allow her to decelerate much later, which meant that Skade’s crew would be the first to rendezvous with the target.

With this in mind, Skade had relegated the bulk of the manufacturing work – mainly suits, weapons, and small craft – to the larger manufactories available to the stragglers. She had directed the onboard manufactories on Nightshade to initiate the production of large quantities of imaging pebbles. It was an invention of the Ultras – simple, yet effective – but Skade had seen to it that she’d incorporated the best technologies available to Mother Nest.

There could be no room for error here.

Skade had even deployed a large lightsail, ribbed with microscopic sensors, at the onset of their departure and directed lasers in the prow of Nightshade to accelerate it. The lightsail would potentially shield the taskforce from colliding with any large debris, and the embedded sensors would allow Nightshade to peer further than she otherwise could. A very hazy picture of Delta Pavonis had emerged, but it would only get clearer as the distance reduced.

While Clavain and Remontoire were in reefersleep, Skade was the commanding officer of the taskforce, and she’d formulated a plan of approach that would involve Nightshade passively gathering intelligence as she silently shed her considerable momentum through orbital maneuvers involving the large jovian planets on the periphery of the system.

Once a binary system, all that remained was a single K-class star – the namesake of the system, Delta Pavonis – surrounded a handful of planets. More curiously, about a 100 AU or so from Delta Pavonis was what seemed like a husk of a once larger star, a neutron star named Hades.

However, the preliminary intel reports claimed something far more fanciful: that Hades, in fact, was not a neutron star at all, rather an immense, ancient alien computer; one that contained more computational power than the entirety of human civilization. More fascinatingly, the report further alleged that there existed a gateway into the computational matrix, cocooned in the heart of the dwarf planet that orbited Hades, aptly named Cerberus.

This preposterously fabulous narrative did not end there.

The reports went so far as to assert that a human had even managed to gain entry into Hades, a certain Dan Sylveste of the famous Sylvestes of the Yellowstone Demarchy.

How much of this was true, was yet to be determined; Resurgam was rather barren as colony worlds went, and thus was rarely visited by traders, so little information managed to seep out. Resurgam also lacked either the economic backbone or the political will to set up intersystem communications, as was common in the rest of the more densely populated regions of human space.

Yet, Skade could not bring herself to reject these borderline absurd claims, just as Clavain and Remontoire had. It seemed that a part of her fully believed, or more accurately, hoped that it was true.

Although the primary goal of the expedition to Delta Pavonis was to secure the Hell-class weapons, Skade felt an unusual, deep-seated attraction to Hades. It almost seemed to call to her, promising troves of esoteric information.

Skade had given it considerable thought too. Evidently, Hades was significantly old, a few hundred million years, at the least. The entities within either had fought off the Wolves, or they had somehow managed to slip under their radar. Either way, it wasn’t hard to believe that they had information and capabilities that could be used against the Wolves.

Additionally, by all accounts, Sylveste seemed savvy enough to be able to handle first contact well. If – and it was a big if, indeed – Sylveste had genuinely engaged with the aliens, it could be argued that a diplomatic groundwork had been laid in place, and that any further attempt to reach out to the alien entities of the matrix would be welcomed. In time, the entities within could even be convinced to be potential allies against the Wolves.

And even if they would not, the intelligence that could be gathered from them could render the unsavory task of dealing with the Wolf superfluous, and Galiana could finally be granted the sweet release of death.

Of course, all her planning would be futile, if she couldn’t convince Clavain, but he was many years away from awakening and usurping her command.

It would be easier, Skade decided, to bypass the usual chain of command, and head to Hades on her own volition. It would be simple; all she’d need to do is peel further ahead of the taskforce, and silently coast on to Hades. Some complex orbital maneuvers would be required to decelerate without alerting the locals - retaking the Hell Class weapons was still an objective of the whole mission, just not _the_ objective.

And so Skade had begun quietly observing the grainy map of the system, to try formulating an approach trajectory.


End file.
